


Symphony for Padmé

by SianShanya



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Padmé Introspection, headcanons galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-04-27 19:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5061007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SianShanya/pseuds/SianShanya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Padmé and love, from the beginning to the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mvt. I: Love’s Light Blue

\----------------- 

She doesn’t love him. 

That would be ridiculous. She is fourteen and she hears her mother’s voice very clearly, to Sola, who is enraged that she must change schools; 

“Fourteen year old girls know nothing of love.” 

Besides, she has never even been kissed. How could she love anyone, let alone the nine year old boy with a smile like the sun and eyes like the desert sky, wide, clear, and blue? 

No, she does not love him, not when he snaps defiantly that his “name is Anakin, and he’s a person.” (and oh, how that comes around to bite them in the most ironic way) 

She doesn’t love him when he offers, with a selflessness that no child should rightly possess, to put his life on the line for her, for the money to get her offworld. She doesn’t love him when she agrees, either. In fact, she doesn’t even realize what he’s offering until his mother’s face crumples and her dark eyes, so unlike his, widen in fear.

She doesn’t love him when he wins, when his future cracks open and takes him far away from the desert, slavery, and the only family he knows, and his sunny smile is so bright it could light the entire Galaxy. 

She feels something stir in her chest when she finds him that night, huddled in a corner with the little japor snippet clutched in his hands. But it isn’t love. It’s sympathy and compassion and maybe even protectiveness, but it’s not love. 

She doesn’t love the little boy who saves her people, who destroys a Federation Command Ship the first time he ever sits behind a starfighter’s controls. 

She doesn’t love him in the days after, not at the victory parade, for which she dresses in white like the Angels of Iego, his first words to her echoing in the back of her mind. Not at the Jedi Master’s funeral, either, as she watches his solemn young face, and thinks that his Padawan braid becomes him. 

No, she doesn’t love him. But she’d call him a friend. She, Obi-Wan, and he have been through too much to call Anakin Skywalker anything less.

\-------------------------- 

Mvt. II: I Knew I was Out of Hope

\-------------------------

She doesn’t love him in the 10 years that follow. She doesn’t love anyone. She is twenty-four now, and she has been kissed several times, by a few young aides, and many more by Scipio’s Rush Clovis. 

She doesn’t love him when he walks through her apartment door. However, she does notice him. He still smiles like the sun lives behind his face, and his eyes are still that same desert blue, but everything else is different, so different, and she thinks she might be in trouble.

Then, he opens his mouth and trips over his words, glancing down at the floor, tanned cheeks flushing pink, and she _knows she is in trouble._

She doesn’t love him, (not yet) but she wants him. Badly.

She doesn’t love him as he sits across from her on the refugee shuttle, talking earnestly about his views on love and the Jedi Order, about how he doesn’t think the two are mutually exclusive. She thinks he’s full of it.

She doesn’t love him as he kisses her on the balcony. She leans into him, and she wonders if this is his first kiss, because he is nervous and awkward, just like she was. Then, reality snaps in around her and she pulls away, her lips tingling. 

She doesn’t love him, not when he tries to balance on a shak for her amusement, but the jolt of terror that arcs through her veins when it tramples him is somewhat troubling. She doesn’t love him as he grabs her and rolls her through the grass, both of them shrieking like children, either. She does like him though, very much.

She doesn’t love him as he confesses his love for her. It twists her heart, but honestly, what was she supposed to feel? She is 24, and she knows nothing of love. What she does know is duty, and the clear rationality of a lifetime spent in service to her people. And no matter how much she likes this boy, she knows it’s not love.

She doesn’t love him when he wakes up screaming. Her heart aches for him, for she knows the cold terror of nightmares all too well. She still likes him though, enough to urge him to Tatooine. Her own safety doesn’t matter. It never has, for her.

She doesn’t love him when he leaves the little homestead, but she worries for him. There is something in his blue eyes that she hasn’t seen before, something dark, and she realizes that he has grown up, too.

She doesn’t love him, not at all, when he confesses to her, eyes filling with tears even as he spits his hatred for the creatures who killed his mother. But she comforts him, because she can, and it’s what he needs. She knows, as he sobs into her shoulder, that she’s seen him at his worst. 

(She’s wrong)

She loves him, finally, finally loves him, as he kneels before his mother’s grave. She is just close enough to hear him apologize to her spirit. From the little she knew of Shmi Skywalker, she imagines it’s unneeded. She doesn’t hear him swear never to let this happen again, but if she had been, she’d have sighed. 

She is 24, and she knows love now. Love, for her, is a smile like the sun, laughter in a Lake Country field, downcast eyes and pink flushes and adorably mumbled flatteries. The kicker is that he honestly believes the ridiculous things he says to her, and she has much of the same to say to him. 

It feels remarkable, a perfect balance of terror and exhilaration, to throw her duty and rationality to the wind and kiss him. His face when she says it, all confused excitement, tinged with the knowledge of near-certain death, makes everything worth it.

She sees so much death that day, more than she’s ever seen, more than she’ll ever see again. 

She’d thought she understood reality when Master Qui-Gon had died. Jedi die like any other sentient. 

As it turns out, blaster bolts work just as well as lightsabers. 

She wonders, for the first time, whether she’s made a mistake when she sees him on the floor, his right arm half gone. For one horrible second, she thinks he’s dead. 

She reassures herself just a few minutes later, with his weight on her shoulders, pale and sweating. She can support him. She can do this.

She’s never sure what makes her say it. One moment, she’s standing with him in Theed’s Spaceport, and the next, she’s taking his new, golden hand, and whispering in his ear; “Marry me.”

It feels right. It must be right, holding his hands and promising him her life. There is doubt, of course, but Padmé is 24 and she knows what love is now. She can do this.

They can do this. 

(They can’t)

\-------------------------

Mvt. III: Darling Take Me Home

\-------------------------

She learns a number of things in the first three years of her marriage. 

Firstly, and happily, Anakin sleeps in a wild sprawl of long limbs, and she is perfectly happy to fill in the gaps. He is tall and oh-so-handsome, and in her less rational moments, usually when she’s lying beside him, hair ruffled and sleepily blissful, she thinks it would be entirely worth it to lose their careers, if only she could spend every night this way. 

Secondly, she can always, always tell how his last campaign was, especially in the first year of the war. When he’s had a good campaign, (no collateral damage, heroics alongside his Master and his Padawan, and few, if any, deaths among his 501st Legion) he breezes into her apartment, all damp hair and crooked grins. He smells like generic soap, engine oil, an electric ozone that she thinks is his lightsaber, and spicy scent that brings sand and endless sky to her mind. More often than not, he brings her dinner or the little fruit tarts from the Nabooan bakery that she loves so much. She flings he arms around his neck, and, from the very first time he comes home, he picks her up as though she were made of feathers, and swings her around in a tight circle. It is her job, it seems, to tangle her fingers into his close-cropped hair and pull him down into a kiss. It’s a ritual, a homecoming, for both of them. 

The bad missions, the ones that go wrong, they are obvious as a shadow on sand. He still comes to her, but his hands are empty, and he doesn’t lift her into the air. Instead, he slips into her apartment, sorrow weighting his steps, and he doesn’t so much hug her as cling to her. She learns, over time, that if she’s quiet, he’ll usually tell her what’s bothering him. He needs to talk, to confide in someone. She thinks that she’s the only person he does confide in, and the thought worries her. She is his wife, but she wonders if she’s enough. 

He knows all of his men, she realizes one night, maybe six months after Geonosis. He knows all of their names, all of their faces, and she doesn’t understand, because to her, the clones are more helmets and armor than men. She doesn’t understand, not really, until she meets Rex and Cody, helmetless on the bridge of the Resolute. They are utterly professional, but she sees Rex roll his eyes at some inane comment by the Coruscanti Admiral on the holo, and then she understands. This army that the Republic has commissioned and purchased, are not droids. 

They’re men. Brothers, maybe, but all individuals. And suddenly, the names Anakin mutters to her at night (Fix, Crash, Ricochet, countless others) take on a new, horrible meaning. The first morning she is home after she meets Rex, she adds a pale blue candle to the shrine in her bedroom, in between Anakin’s and Ahsoka’s. It seems the right place for it.

She has to resist the urge to punch every senator who ever uses the phrase “just clones” from then on.

The war rages, and she touches it every now and then, on the Malevolence, on Dac, and, worst of all, on Naboo, when her people are threatened again by emotionless battle droids and genocidal scientists. Mostly though, she sees it through a holo screen, through the Jedi Council and military reports, and through numbers.

Another four million credits added to the war budget. 12 Companies deployed to Ryloth. 1600 casualties so far this week. 14 systems occupied by Separatist forces. 2 million refugees.

The numbers are quick, impersonal, and nothing like her husband’s increasingly hollow cheeks and dark eyes, the way he jumps at loud noises and wakes up in a cold sweat, shaking. 

The war, for her, is a mindless drudgery of Senate meetings, of budget increases and arguments. She remembers the battles and missions that she takes part in, and the ones that affect Anakin within her view. 

She remembers Ahsoka’s decision. 

Ahsoka, the feisty little one who’d captured their hearts; hers and Anakin’s and Obi-Wan’s, too, though he wouldn’t admit it. She is there one day and gone the next, and it’s the right decision for her (Padmé has never wanted to scream at the Masters so much as upon hearing of the girl’s expulsion) but it leaves them all reeling, searching for a new counterweight in their lives. 

Padmé doesn’t find one, not until months later, and she suspects Anakin doesn’t either. 

It’s two weeks after Ahsoka goes, three days after Clovis dies that he presses his forehead to hers and whispers;

“When the war ends, I’m done.”

They drink too much the night after Fives dies, enough so that she forgets, she forgets to do the one thing she’s done every day since she’d turned 16. Worse, in the morning, she doesn’t remember that she’d forgotten, and instead sees Anakin off with an encouraging smile, hoping her headache goes away quickly. 

He’s gone again two days later, there’s a note in her office. He doesn’t apologize anymore, he hasn’t for at least a year now, and she isn’t annoyed. There is nothing either of them can do, they are bound by their own lives, by duty and responsibility. 

She won’t see him again for eight months. 

\-----------------------------

Mvt. IV: I Begged, and Love Said No

\-----------------------------

She is twenty-seven now, and she has been in love for three years, and she is terrified.

Everyone in Galactic City is terrified, actually, their eyes all trained on the sky, on the flashes and lights that are barely visible in Coruscant’s sky. They are afraid for themselves and for their Chancellor, for their leader, who is even now a hostage aboard the Separatist Command ship.

Bitterly, she wonders if it might be better for the Republic if a stray shot takes his life. 

She is not afraid for herself (she never has been) or for Palpatine; no, her terror is for Anakin. He’s up there, she knows, trying to free the Chancellor from Dooku or Grievous one. Unbidden, unconscious, her hand goes to her stomach, to quiet the little one. He too, it seems, is worried. 

He needn’t be. The flaming cockpit of the command ship crash lands, miraculously, on a landing pad, and half an hour later, she is in his arms, swung into the air as always, as though she weighs nothing. 

She loves him all the more when he smiles, breathless at her news, with the boundless optimism that she has needed these past eight months alone with her secret.

She loves him that night, too, as he flirts with her, his sunshine smile making her light up, laugh for the first time in weeks. 

Had she known, then, that this would be the last time they’d ever be happy, she wouldn’t have fallen asleep so quickly.

She loves him when he wakes up sweating, and she soothes his fears away. They’re patently ridiculous, after all. How could she possibly die in childbirth, here on Coruscant, or even on Naboo? He’ll calm down and he’ll realize too. She has faith.

She loves him, and she is so, so sorry to plot against his friend, but Palpatine worries her far more than Anakin’s anger ever will. It’s for him, anyway, him and their baby. She won’t live, won’t raise a child in a false democracy.

She loves him and she can barely breathe with fear when she looks out of her window and sees smoke billowing from the Temple. Inside her, their son (Anakin still insists it’s a girl) shifts restlessly, and she knows, bone deep and certain, that their universe has changed irrevocably, and that Anakin is right in the middle of it. 

She is relieved for a moment when he steps off the speeder, but his words are so confusing, so unlike him, and his hands are shaking when he presses her gently against his chest. 

She loves him, and she simply refuses to believe what Obi-Wan says. It can’t be true. Her Ani is incapable of the horrors he describes. She is reeling, and she cannot even summon the strength to be shocked when he figures out her secret.

She loves him, and so she goes to Mustafar. She has to see him, to reassure herself that Obi-Wan is wrong, is too shaken in his grief to understand what he’d seen. Again, she feels momentary relief when he hugs her, but again, it flees, leaving her empty and desperate, when he starts talking. 

Anakin has never, never wanted to rule anything, let alone a Galaxy, and he’s rational; surely he doesn’t really think the murder of children is justified, under any circumstances?

Still, she loves him, and she can forgive this, she can, but she needs to see him, the boy with the smile like sunshine and eyes like the desert sky, the man who breezes through her doorway with dinner, who whispers the names of the men he’d lost to the war at night. 

And for just a moment, she sees all that, sees the man she married flicker in this stranger’s eyes, but then Obi-Wan is there, and it’s gone. 

She loves him, he loves her, and it will be enough, it has to be enough. (It isn’t)

She loves him, even as her throat constricts, blocking her airways, and everything goes black.

She loves him when she wakes up, in agony, and with Obi-Wan’s voice in her ear. She doesn’t ask about him. There is no room in her mind for anything but pain, not until the twins’ (they’d both been right, it seemed) wails fill the room. She can feel it, the strength leaving her, her death approaching on fast wings, but she still doesn’t ask about him. Obi-Wan’s tunic is scorched and his expression numb and empty, and really, that tells her all she needs to know. 

So, instead, she names her son Luke, the Nabooan world for light. Her daughter, Anakin named, but she bestows it. Leia. In Nabooan, it is a kind of flower, known for its deceptive beauty, but in Anakin’s native language, the language of Tatooine’s nomads and Shmi Skywalker’s people, it means ‘storm.’ 

She can give them nothing else, nothing but their names, and she hopes they serve them well. 

For Obi-Wan, she has only her hope, and her love. 

Obi-Wan doesn’t believe her, not truly, but he doesn’t have to. 

She loves him.

But she is twenty-seven, she has been kissed a thousand times, and loved, and married, and as it turns out, she knows no more of love than she did when she was fourteen.


	2. Symphony For a Mother's Spirit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Padmé and hate, from the end of her life to the beginning of Anakin's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canonical and non canonical character death. You have been warned. I made myself sad again. As always, please leave your comments, they fuel my soul. The Movement titles for this and the previous chapter are from various HIM songs.

Mvt. V: With Dead Leaves in Your Hands

 

She doesn’t hate him. She tries, for a while. She really does. She should hate him, for all that he’s done, for creating a galaxy in which her children will grow up alone and afraid. In the end, though, it seems she is incapable of hating Anakin Skywalker.

From what she can think, she has two options. She can hate them all, Anakin and Obi-Wan and Bail and Yoda and herself for the parts they’ve all played in this. Or, she can hate none of them. She chooses the latter, because it seems like less work. It leaves her with enough energy to do other things, like watch over her children, and bear witness to the suffering of her galaxy. So she watches. For all her decisions to forgive and move on though, she soon finds that hate is inevitable. Palpatine, for example, earns her hatred immediately, the first time he speaks as Emperor. There is no hell deep enough to punish this demon for what he’s done.

She doesn’t hate them when they separate her twins. She sees Obi-Wan and Bail and Yoda talk about Luke and Leia and what’s best for them. They say something about ‘safer apart’ and ‘strong in the Force’ and then they go their separate ways. She is angry and sad to see her children separated by a galaxy, but she can think of no better parents than Bail and Breha, and Beru and Owen are kind, gentle souls. Her heart aches for Anakin, though, when she realizes that their son will grow up on the world he hates so much. 

She absolutely doesn’t hate her family, as she watches them, silent and black-clad at her funeral. They keep it as simple as a State Funeral can be, and Her Majesty’s speech is lovely, all about Padmé’s kindness and devotion to her people, but Sabé’s numb expression hurts, though not as much as seeing Bail in the background, holding her daughter in his arms. 

She doesn’t hate her friends, and so only once does she ever let them see her. Bail is exhausted and a little drunk, slumped over his desk on the twins’ third birthday, and he doesn’t seem surprised to see her, he just smiles, sad and fond, and waves. It shocks her and it hurts, like a blaster bolt to the gut, to see him smile like that, and she vows then and there that she won’t haunt her loved ones, not ever. She has no desire to see what her appearance might do to Obi-Wan, for example. He blames himself for everything, she knows, and guilt ages him more than time or Tatooine’s suns. He still looks out for Luke, though, and spends many a sleepless night watching the little homestead. Twice, he forces Tuskens away from her son’s home, his ‘saber flashing a brilliant blue against the black dunes. She loves him for that. 

She loves him for watching over and protecting her son, but she cannot forgive him for what he’s done to Anakin. She cannot forgive him for so completely destroying his best friend, or for letting him live after seeing how far he’d fallen. A tiny, dark corner of her heart places a little of the blame for every life her husband has taken since that day on Obi-Wan’s shoulders. Is that hate? She doesn’t know anymore.

The bright corners of her heart still love him though, cursed to live when everything he loved is gone, and forced to watch his most ancient, primeval enemy twist the Galaxy into a machine of military might and fear. And so, when she sees him in his lonely domed house, sitting on the rough stone bench and staring at the wall with silver and black hilt clutched in his hands, so tight that they bleed, she goes to him. She won’t haunt him, and she can’t forgive him, but she won’t leave him alone to face his demons, either. 

Especially not when the demon he battles wears her Ani’s face.

There is no corner of her soul that doesn’t love her twins. She watches them grow up, delighting in their little personalities, and laughing at their antics. They are a handful, even apart, and she cannot imagine the sort of trouble they’d find together. One afternoon, as on one end of the Galaxy, Luke is carted into the homestead, covered head to toe in engine grease and squealing in delight, and on the other, Leia dodges her nanny and splashes happily through the palace fountains for nearly an hour before being caught, Padmé wonders if she’d have been able to admonish them without laughing. She doesn’t think so. 

She watches her babies, but they never see her. She thinks they probably could, if she’d show herself, but she doesn’t deserve that, doesn’t deserve their love. Besides, they have families, parents even, and she doesn’t want to take anything from Bail and Breha, nor yet Owen and Beru. So instead, she watches. She watches over Luke and Leia, over Bail and Breha and Obi-Wan, over Ahsoka and Rex and over her parents and Sola too. She watches little Pooja grow up and become Naboo’s Senator, and she tries not to cry. She does cry when Leia is sworn into Bail’s vacated Senate seat, wearing all white and an eager expression.

She doesn’t hate Anakin, and she doesn’t want to, so she does not watch over him. She cannot bring herself to look at him, to know what her absence has done. She doesn’t want to see him kneel to Palpatine, or hunt Jedi, or have to use a hyperbaric chamber to sleep. Maybe she is a coward, unable to face the creature she helped create, she can accept that. Because she loves him, still, after everything he’s done, and she cannot bear his anguish, not even in death.

\----------------------------------

Part VI: On Flowers of Evil In Bloom

\----------------------------------

There is a hum in the fabric of her existence on the day that Leia’s ship receives the Death Star transmissions. Something is happening, something that will tip the scales, though for better or for worse, Padmé cannot tell. 

She doesn’t hate him, not when he captures their daughter. It’s the first time she sees, really sees, Vader. She is screaming, so loud that it seems ridiculous that they don’t hear her, hoping, praying that he’ll find the spark of light she knows is there, and recognize his girl, the daughter he’d sensed and named in his own language. Padmé hopes, but he is immutable in his despair, and he doesn’t look twice at this little Senator that has her face and his fire. Padmé wants to shake him, she clenches her fists, but she doesn’t stop hoping, or start hating.

She doesn’t hate him as his agents chase Artoo and Threepio to Tatooine, either. His agents, because, even after so many years, he still won’t come here willingly, and that probably saves them all. The droids are in good hands with Luke. He appreciates them as Anakin did, as he’d taught her to, and it’s not annoyance that sends him across the Jundland Wastes, so much as worry. Something between fear and indignation twist through her when Obi-Wan starts talking about fathers and Jedi and grand adventures among the stars. Is it a Jedi the Galaxy needs now? Padmé isn’t sure. After all, Anakin had been a Jedi, and Obi-Wan and Yoda too, and look how well that had turned out. Besides, Luke is no child, and he deserves the truth, of both his parents. 

She doesn’t even hate him when his men murder Owen and Beru. She stands with her son on the ridge as he watches his home burn, and she longs to hold him, to be there for him in a way he can understand, but she can’t, so she just reaches out and brushes her hand against his back, knowing it won’t feel like anything more than a warm breeze. It’s not much, but it’s all she has for him. 

And it’s more than Obi-Wan, perfect Jedi that he is, will give. 

She doesn’t hate him, but she is enraged, in that little cell on the Death Star. Leia’s pain is a knife in Padmé’s heart, twisting all the more since it’s Vader that inflicts it, and all she can think is that it wasn’t supposed to be this way, there was going to be a nursery in Lake Country and they were going to be a family, a real one. This life (or afterlife, she’s not quite sure what to call it) of pain and fear and sorrow and rage is wrong. 

She bears witness to her daughter’s pain and to her husband’s anger, and when he leaves the cell, frustrated and a little impressed, she stays and she bears witness to Leia’s terror as well, huddled in the corner of her cell, shaking and sobbing. 

She might have hated him when Alderaan cracks into light and dust, but she can feel his disgust, and just a little bit of horror, too. Instead, it just reinforces her ironclad belief that he is not beyond saving, not yet, and maybe not ever. Also, his grip on Leia’s shoulder is probably the only thing that stops her from throttling Tarkin with her bare hands, and for that, she supposes she ought to thank him. 

Bail stays, just long enough to hug her and murmur I’m so sorry, I tried to protect her, but then he and Breha are gone, off to wherever the souls at peace go. 

Her twins collide like stars, friends and partners immediately, and she has never been more proud of them. She smiles a knowing smile at Leia and her pilot, throwing insults befitting five year olds more than hardened criminals in each other’s faces. She loves them already, Han and Chewbacca. 

She breaks her rule about Vader to watch the duel. She watches Obi-Wan come to his decision just as Luke comes into view, and she screams in anger as Vader’s blade swings in a slow, avoidable arc and connects with his body because this, this manipulation is not what Luke needs, what he needs is a living mentor. She knows it was on purpose, too, because less than a second after he dies, Obi-Wan is there with her, calling out to Luke before he even sees her. Padmé reminds herself very sternly that she doesn’t hate Obi-Wan, and clears her throat. 

You should speak to them. he says, after the apologies and hugs. He doesn’t need to specify who he means. She shakes her head and he shrugs and lets it go. 

She doesn’t hate him when he shoots Luke’s childhood friend down, either. At this point, she figures, she is truly incapable of it. Obi-Wan barely seems to notice the boy’s death, he is focused on speaking to Luke, guiding him to ‘use the Force.’ 

The Death Star goes in a blast of stardust, far too similar to Alderaan for Padmé’s comfort. She feels no righteous vindication, though she cannot begrudge the Rebels theirs. Her happiness comes entirely from seeing her twins together, talking and bonding with their smuggler. Well, from that, and from having her friend, practically her brother, here with her, a partner in this vigil she has come to think of as her penitence. 

\---------------------------------

Mvt. VII: Ran Out of Blood and Hope

\---------------------------------

Padmé is 23 years dead now, and she still can’t hate Anakin. The Rebellion is a thorn in his side, she knows, and it makes her proud every time the bounties on her children go up. Obi-Wan stays with her. It seems he, like her, has unfinished business with the galaxy, though his mostly seems to consist of advising Luke from beyond the grave and urging her to do the same. 

Hoth changes things. She doesn’t realize at first, when Luke stares straight at him, what has happened, not until Obi-Wan urges him to go to Dagobah and Yoda. Upon hearing the old Jedi’s name, Padmé forgets her promise to herself and she does appear in the swirling snow, but Luke is already unconscious, and he doesn’t see her. 

She breaks her other promise, too, but this is too much. Her words are harsh and cold, his quiet and placating, but Padmé is not the girl she’d been 23 years ago. She is not 24 anymore and she no longer believes in love or Jed. Go. she snaps, and hateful is the best word for her tone. Obi-Wan raises one gingery eyebrow. 

Where? he asks, calmly because he doesn’t even understand why she is angry, all he has ever known has been the Jedi way, and he cannot fathom that it might have been the cause of all of this. 

Anywhere. Away from me. Now. She hates him as he fades from her sight. He is sending her son, the boy with her hope and her light to a creature who will do his utmost to stamp that light into a Jedi Knight’s calm passivity. Hasn’t it become clear by now that a Jedi is not what the galaxy needs? A Jedi will not defeat Vader, and certainly won’t do what she knows can be done, and bring Anakin back. 

She will not watch Yoda train Luke, she refuses to watch the love and spark leave her son’s eyes, as they had Anakin’s, and it feels intrusive to watch Leia and Han make their slow way to Bespin, reveling in their realized feelings. She finds herself at Ahsoka’s side instead, bursting with pride at the amazing woman she has become, the first child she and Anakin had loved. Ahsoka is with Rex, now, and with the two Jedi and their Rebel cell, and she commands like Anakin used to, bold but utterly willing to share the risk. She tries not to compare the two of them. Anakin is still a bold commander, but his men don’t trust him with anything other than the mission, and certainly not with their lives. 

There is too much at Bespin to watch, and it all hurts her heart. Leia’s declaration, borne of a desperate need for her smuggler to know what it is she feels, brings tears to Padmé’s eyes, and she wonders, again, how Vader can stand there and not know his daughter when she is so like him. She also wonders if he sees the similarities between this scene and Geonosis, but whatever her husband feels is twisted and tangled up behind his mask, beyond her sight. 

She knows this duel will break her, so she watches Leia instead, watches her take her rage out on Calrissian and every stormtrooper that dares come between her and Han, and she thinks the rumors get it all wrong when they say that Luke is the one to fear. They’re too late to save Han, but not Luke. Leia can feel him from miles away, his pain and his conflict. Padmé realizes, upon seeing her son’s face, what has happened. She wants, more than anything, to appear then, and comfort him with the truth she knows, but she can’t. Not yet, not while he is still suffering because she abandoned him. She brushes the sweaty hair from his forehead and sits with him, no matter how much it hurts to hear him say ‘father’ with such pain and horror. 

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, damn it. 

\---------------------------------------------

Mvt. VIII: With Souls to be Saved and Faith Regained

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It always seems to begin here, she thinks, as her family faces Tatooine yet again. Today, though, they’ll be leaving as victors, not mere survivors. 

Leia is an entity of rage, forced to sit on the Hutt’s throne, her skin and her pain laid bare for the whole pack of thugs. She takes it back, though, her skin and her pain and herself, with a chain and her own strength. 

It is a true shame that Anakin isn’t here to see his daughter rip her own chains off and strangle her captor with them; she’s sure he’d find it incredibly poetic. 

She cannot forgive Obi-Wan or the ancient Grandmaster for lying to her son, and then for placing the burden of killing Vader, of killing Anakin on Luke’s shoulders, but she does not begrudge Yoda his rest. He has endured 1000 years and the death of his people, and she supposes he’s earned some peace, if her children can give it to him.

‘Many Bothans,’ says Mon, but that’s not all. Padmé’s first girl, too, gave her life for this mission, slamming her damaged starfighter into the bridge of the pursuing Star Destroyer to give her squad enough time to jump away. Her spirit stands with Padmé, fingers interlaced and a worried frown on her young face. This is it, she whispers, this is the end.

Ahsoka’s attention is on the fleet, and on the Strike Team, but Padmé knows her daughter’s strength, and her friends’ too, so her eyes are only for Luke. When his blade crosses Anakin’s again, she can feel the stroke reverberate through the Force, and she knows Ahsoka was right. This is it. 

She doesn’t hate him, still as Vader and his Master throw everything they can at Luke, trying to force him to let go of his hope, but he won’t do it, not until finally, finally, Anakin realizes that Leia is his daughter, Luke’s sister, and at last, he has found something that will unhinge their son. It works, for a time, but Luke is her son too, he has her hopes and her love burned into his soul, and that love is enough where hers was not. He stops, and he flings his lightsaber at Palpatine’s feet. 

She deosn’t hate him, not at all, as he lunges for Palpatine. She knows, she has always known, but it is still a bit of a shock to see Anakin break his own chains for their boy. Palpatine doesn’t expect it, and goes to his death with surprise in his foul yellow eyes. Padmé half expected to move on, as Bail and Breha had, at Anakin’s return to the Light, but she doesn’t, and instead watches her husband die in their son’s arms with tears in her eyes and something resembling love in her heart. Below, on the moon, Leia, injured and desperate, fires the final shot of the battle to her smuggler’s awe and adoration, and the shield bunker goes up in a rush of black smoke, followed, soon after, by the explosion of another Death Star. Beside her, Ahsoka smiles proudly, and then she slips away, sensing Padmé’s need for solitude.

She is not at the party the Rebels have, but in the quiet clearing with her son, bearing witness to his solitary grief. No one else will mourn Anakin’s passing, but Luke shouldn’t have to be alone here. The armor burns, and the smoke smells like freedom. He waits until the fire burns down to embers, looking around as though expecting someone. Whatever it is he’s looking for, (and she has a pretty good idea) he doesn’t find it, and he goes back to the dancing in the Ewok village, a slump to his shoulders. 

She knows what he was waiting for, and she is not willing to let it go so easily, so she settles to the grass and waits. 

In the end, it’s not Anakin that comes to her, but Obi-Wan. She doesn’t hate him then, either. If she were him, she wouldn’t have come either. The older man drops down beside her, and, though she isn’t happy with him, still, she cannot summon her vitriol. 

You were right, he says softly.

I knew I would be. There is no hate in her words this time, only surety and a little smugness. It was always going to be love that ended Palpatine, just like it was fear that boosted him. Obi-Wan nods slowly.

Yes, I think I see that now. Will you see the twins? She sighs.

Probably. They ought to at least know my name. Obi-Wan is quiet for nearly a minute, thinking, she supposes. 

He’s here, you know. She nods. You should go talk to him. He leaves after that, off to find Ahsoka, she thinks. There are things to be said between them as well, for she was his Padawan too. 

She finds him in the shadow of the great trees at the edge of the village, watching the twins celebrate. He doesn’t see her until she’s nearly reached him, and when he does, he looks stricken. She stops a few feet from him, and takes a moment to just look. Here is her Ani, all brown hair and blue eyes and oh, she has missed him. She smiles a small, sad smile, and reaches for his hand, like she had on their wedding day, and a thousand times since. Later, there will be shouting, and apologies, tears and pain, but for now, she doesn’t hate him, and that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, I made myself sad. Comment please, they fuel my soul :)


End file.
